The Trinity Game

a voodoo ceremony.

Daniel looked out at the crowd as Pat pulled to a stop at the curb and threw it in park. It wasn’t a huge crowd, but it was enough to start.

Most impressive of all were the costumed Mardi Gras Indians—a riot of color, a blur of green and yellow and red and blue, pink and purple, glittering sequins and shiny beads—dancing and spinning through the crowd, making the children laugh, with huge feathered headdresses waving in the humid breeze.

Tim Trinity hopped out of the back seat and Priestess Ory welcomed him with a hug and led him toward the crowd.

Pat pulled the keys from the ignition. “Last chance to back out of this cockamamie plan.”

Daniel watched the scene through the windshield. His uncle was dancing with a Mardi Gras Indian chief, making faces at two small boys who convulsed with laughter at the sight. “Don’t want to,” he said.

“OK.” Pat grabbed his backpack and handed Daniel a walkie-talkie wired to an earpiece. He pointed at a button on the top. “Push to talk, flip the switch to lock it in talk mode if you need both hands.” Daniel clipped the unit to his belt on the opposite side of his gun and inserted the earpiece. Pat pressed the button on his own walkie- talkie. “Read me?”

Daniel nodded. “Very loud.”

“Good.” Pat pointed at the photo taped to the dashboard. “Take a minute,” he said. “Tim’s life depends on you being able to recognize this asshole.”

Daniel had been staring at it the whole way from Saint Sebastian’s. That’s why he’d asked Pat to do the driving. But he took another minute now to examine the face of the man who’d come in from Montreal to murder his uncle.

He nodded to himself, snatched the photo off the dashboard, stuck it in his pocket, and put his sunglasses on.

Pat donned his own sunglasses, then pulled a lime-green plastic bowler hat from his backpack and put it on his head. He said, “Tell me true now, does my butt look big in this?”

Daniel couldn’t help but smile. “Not at all,” he said, “very slimming.”

“It’ll help you spot me in the crowd, brother.” Pat opened the car door. “Let’s go do this.”

Reverend Tim Trinity and Mambo Angelica Ory started walking together, and the people walked with them, down Caffin Avenue, passing one- and two-story homes, some mid-renovation with camping trailers parked in their driveways or on their lawns, others still boarded up, still bearing the spray-painted symbols left behind by soldiers after the flood waters receded, the number at the bottom of each symbol indicating how many bodies were found inside.

Veves of the damned.

But other homes told a better story, one of endurance and rebirth, of stubborn faith in the possibility that tomorrow can be made better than today. Those houses stood up straight and their windows sparkled and they wore new coats of paint and pride.

And as the crowd walked, so did it grow. People came down off porches and out of trailers, children ran from their yards, and by the time the parade passed Fats Domino’s yellow house with the big star above the door and the gold-tipped iron fence, the crowd was more than two hundred strong.

Still not enough, but getting better.

On St. Claude Avenue even more joined their ranks, teenagers from the KFC and women from the Family Dollar parking lot, men from barbershops and bars. Shopkeepers looked out from doorways and people in the crowd called them to join with Reverend Tim, and OPEN signs turned to CLOSED in the doors of their shops, and the crowd grew even stronger.

As they passed the Gasco, a brass band fell in and started playing “Saints,” and soon as many in the crowd were dancing as walking, many others singing along, the mood rising above festive, on the way to joyful.

But not for Daniel. He kept about ten feet to his uncle’s left, Pat on the other side, scanning the crowd for the face of an assassin. White folks made up only about a quarter of the crowd, an advantage since he was looking for a white face. His eyes never stopped roaming, scanning the crowd, scanning windows and doorways, occupants of passing cars, cataloging white faces, dismissing black faces, moving on to the next. But the crowd was growing fast, and the task would only get harder as they got closer to the French Quarter.

They crossed Reynes, the drawbridge ahead, now clearly visible through the heat haze hanging in the air.

Daniel’s earpiece crackled and Pat said, “OK, approaching the first choke point, and I smell bacon.”

“Think they’ve had time to find us?”

“Yup. No cars coming over the bridge, and I don’t think it’s just a lull in traffic. Be ready.”

A large sign with red letters stood in the neutral ground…

…but nobody stopped. Daniel glanced at his watch, pressed the talk button. “We’re bang on schedule.”

Pat said, “Let’s hope everyone is.”

As Daniel glanced at the cloudless blue sky, two gray sedans came over the bridge side by side and stopped at an angle, blocking both sides of the road. Special Agents Hillborn and Robertson and six other hard-looking feds got out and strode forward. The bells sounded and the bridge began to rise behind them.

The parade stopped. The brass band fell silent. Then, as the FBI men approached, the crowd coalesced around Trinity. An angry black man with a gray beard and dreadlocks called out to them, “Yeah, now you come down to the Lower Nine, where the fuck were you when we needed you?”

“That’s right,” said a young woman in the crowd. “And why you ain’t investigatin’ them rich folk who made off with the money, what was supposed to be payin’ for the levees, huh? What about that?”

Shit. This was not going to help.

Daniel separated himself from the crowd and walked directly to Hillborn and said, “Hi.”

“Hi? That’s what you’re bringing to the party?” said Hillborn. “Hi? You fucking moron, did you really think we were going to let you do this?”

“You’re not taking him from me,” said Daniel.

“Actually, we are.”

Daniel smiled as the sound of rotor blades grew louder and Hillborn glanced skyward. The news chopper had arrived. “CNN. The world is watching, Agent Hillborn.”

Hillborn glared at Daniel, then shook his head. “Oh, you silly man, you are just determined to make things worse, aren’t you?”

“With respect, you’re just flat-out wrong here,” said Daniel. “Our elected representatives are on record supporting Trinity’s right to speak. Do you really want to be the government thug-in-a-suit who slaps cuffs on him and shoves him into a car, and then he’s never heard from again? That’s what the secret police do in places like Iran. You really want to be that guy?” He glanced up at the news chopper, adding, “I’m sure it’ll make good television.”

Daniel stopped talking and watched Hillborn think over his options. After what felt like a week, Hillborn said, “Stay put a minute. I’ll get back to you.” He turned and walked back to his car and sat in it, talking on his radio.

Daniel’s earpiece crackled again and Pat said, “Hang tight.”

“Where are you?” said Daniel, scanning the crowd. “I can’t see you.”

“Just working the room, checking out new arrivals,” said Pat. “Speaking of which, your view is about to improve. In five…four…three…two…”

Julia came up fast and put a hand on Daniel’s forearm, “Sorry we’re late. Lost the satellite for a few minutes, but Shooter got it fixed.”

Daniel looked toward the back of the crowd, saw Shooter approaching from the CNN news van with a camera on his shoulder. “Aside from giving me a minor heart attack,” said Daniel, “your timing is actually perfect.”

“Hi, Daniel,” Shooter said, handing Julia a microphone and stepping back with his camera. “We’re on in sixty